‘Black Panther’ Executive Producer Says Movie Will Be a Combination of ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Bond’

We are in the Hall of Kings. It’s a place rich in history. The spiritual center of Wakanda.

Vines creep the ancient stone steps, still growing strong after centuries — much like the royal family arrayed before us.

This is a portrait of the ruling Wakandans from Marvel’s new Black Panther film, with the title hero played by Chadwick Boseman standing front and center, clad in the onyx-hued armored suit he uses to defend this technologically advanced wonderland from the outside world.

The Black Panther suit is woven with Vibranium, the indestructible yet-surprisingly-maleable mineral that is nearly non-existent around the world but can be found in abundance beneath the surface of Wakanda — a fact its people have kept secret for thousands of years.

They’ve mined it, experimented with it, and used it to develop medicines, vehicles, and weaponry that make the rest of the industrialized nations look primitive.

Wakanda is a land that has never been conquered. And as long as outsiders remain in the dark about its treasures and advancements, maybe no one will really try.

But that’s wishful thinking. There are myriad threats from outside its borders, and now there may be uprising and revolution within. T’Challa is a young man, a novice on the throne, and the assassination of his father is proof to many within Wakanda that outreach to the rest of the world is foolish. Maybe it’s time for someone else to seize the reins of power.

In that way, executive producer Nate Moore tells us that Black Panther pays tribute to two cinematic classics.

One is an iconic saga about a son rising to fill the void of a fallen patriarch, and “the five families” competing to seize power amid the upheaval.

The other is a fun-loving action series about a hero with a license to kill.

“What I think we landed on was sort of a cross between James Bond and The Godfather,” Moore tells EW. “A big, operatic family drama centered on a world of international espionage. So hopefully we’re getting the best of both worlds.”